Following my last blog post on MokaFive Suite 3.0 I received a couple of questions on the MokaFive BareMetal player and the licensing implications of working with a client hypervisor. Both good questions, as both directly address significant points of differentiation between MokaFive and its competition.
MokaFive BareMetal Player
MokaFive BareMetal
MokaFive’s forthcoming BareMetal Player is a special-purpose virtual desktop execution environment that will be installable directly on the bare metal of a desktop PC or laptop, replacing the native operating system. MokaFive’s BareMetal Player integrates the MokaFive Player with a thin Linux based OS. This provides MokaFive customers with the opportunity to deliver endpoints that have less management overhead than typical thin-client devices, while retaining the performance benefits of local desktop execution. MokaFive has not released the detail of the base OS used in the BareMetal Player, other than to confirm it is a Linux variant. Until it is released it will not be possible to determine just how secure it is; however given MokaFive’s past emphasis on security, it should not disappoint.
Windows Licensing
Unlike server hosted virtual desktop solutions from the likes of Citrix and VMware, MokaFive’s virtual desktop instances run locally and so are covered by Microsoft’s standard licensing terms for Windows 7 which means that IT organizations implementing MokaFive Suite are not required to pay the $100 annual license fee for Microsoft’s Windows Virtual Desktop Access (VDA). This represents a significant marketing opportunity for MokaFive, Microsoft has struggled to get IT organizations to accept the VDA licensing scheme seeing it as both an unnecessary speed bump towards implementing desktop virtualization, and an unwelcome transition from a one-off capital expense to a continual operating expense. So any desktop virtualization solution that avoids Windows VDA licensing is going to be looked at favorably by potential customers.
Windows licensing requirements for MokaFive Suite differ based on the installed endpoint operating system. Computers running Windows in a MokaFive LivePC onto of Apple OS X fall under the basic one device, one licence rule so assuming that MokaFive is being used to deliver Windows 7, a customer would require a Windows 7 Professional License and no more. The same requirement will apply to endpoints running the MokaFive BareMetal Player when it is released. However if the computer is already running Windows as it’s host OS, a Windows 7 Enterprise software license with Software Assurance is required to comply with Microsoft’s licensing terms for running multiple Windows OS instances (i.e., host and guest) on the same device.
Windows licensing requirements are the same for both the standard MokaFive Suite and the Service Provider Edition, again providing an advantage to MokaFive in that service providers and their customers do not have to deal with the extra complexity of licensing hosted virtual desktops delivered by third-party service providers, something that has caused considerable confusion in the industry in recent weeks.
This is all very good, but as you say its not VDI. So how does it help me when I’ve already got Alteris to manage my desktop.
Theres no way this will fly compared to a real VDI solution.
Ha. I can't wait to see how Microsoft react when they work out that you can do VDI without VDA